The last attempt at writing this article 10 days ago was interrupted by Phyllis (our auction administrator) yelling to me that the World Trade Center had been hit by an airplane. On that note I decided to skip that article, even though it was almost finished.

I was asked a very interesting question the other day. "How will the World Trade Center incident affect trains? How did the Gulf War affect the train market?"

Interesting question because I am not sure on the first one. Obviously the stock market has taken a big hit, and I think that will affect every business for a while regardless.

However at the same time, the evening of this terrible attack, I ended up at a favorite watering hole where I honestly thought I'd be the only person there.

As it turned out the place was jammed. I think people wanted to get away from the days events even if only for a couple of hours. But I was surprised.

The Gulf War was a completely different creature from what we are facing now. We knew who the enemy was, we acted, and we won the war in a short period of time. If I am not mistaken that happened in the Winter months, and to be honest I don't remember business falling off significantly.

I have noticed however this Month has been dead in the store since the incident. However mail order sales have been steady, although maybe a little down. But that is hard to tell as September traditionally is my slowest month of the year. It would be hard to say honestly that this incident hasn't hurt business, as I think it has. Everyone has been in shock. I think the last thing on anyone's mind has been trains the days after this horrible act.

As I said, I think every business will feel the pinch, but hopefully everyone will be OK. I suspect that the train market will do pretty well as we are moving into the train season, and possibly people will want to find activities that keep their mind off the uncertainty and horrible events that have and will take place in the future.

In the second World War Lionel and other Manufactures of trains of course had to stop making trains due to lack of materials.

If that happened during this war, it would actually be a help to the overall markets as they are making to many trains as I have said time and time again. If they did stop making trains, we could go several years without missing them as there is so much available in the secondary market.

Let's just hope this doesn't escalate into something more serious than it already is (if that is possible). At some point should that happen, it is anyone's guess. However let's not forget that this is the United States of America, and the entire world is behind us. We should be able to handle this.

Regardless, I don't see anyone abandoning their hobbies and interests, especially trains.

One other comment. Tom Ridge being named secretary of homeland security is a fabulous thing for our country. It is a shame that the post has to be created, but Tom Ridge will do a tremendous job.

Tom Ridge is the current Governor of Pennsylvania, and actually is from Erie, Pa. where our business is located. He has been a fabulous Governor for Pennsylvania, and will be missed terribly as this appointment forces him to leave office early.

Another great thing about Tom Ridge is that he likes Electric Trains. He has been in my store on several occasions near Christmas. You know we are in good hands!

I had a great thing happen to me last week.

Actually the week before I had received a large list of trains from a gentleman from Minnesota who wanted to sell his collection. Of course I called him and we negotiated a price eventually that I offered him. Now this is the third largest offer for a train collection I have given this year.

I was about to ask him when he wanted me to travel to see the collection, when he said that he would truck it to me. Now that is refreshing!

However sometimes I am skeptical when things like this happen.

We both decided that the following Thursday would be the best day, and I asked him to call me when he left.

I didn't hear from him Monday or Tuesday. Of course I thought if he hadn't left by Tuesday he wouldn't be coming with all that happened, and left it at that.

The following day I received a call on the Golf course. It was Joyce telling me he was there in the store. Well lucky for me I had told him I had a very, very important meeting on Wednesday, so I was able to finish the round, and we met the next morning at 8AM. Funny how things happen.

At any rate, the collection is everything that I expected, except for some grading discrepancies. This is an interesting collection as it has some hard to find items and variations as you will note if you look in the ‘new stuff' and choochooauctions.com. At this writing there is a lot more to come, so please check it out. You are bound to find something that you can't live without! Please note however that most of the collection was sitting on shelves and is very dusty. However that can be cleaned off. I don't do that as I am allergic to dust. As a matter of fact I have a terrible dust taste in my mouth right now and my nose is running. Occupational hazard I guess!

And that is correct, I am back golfing again. I am sure that makes your day. It sure does mine. I was off for 6 weeks with the worst case of tendinitis in the history of the world I think. Even the doctor I saw was shocked that it was only tendinitis after the MRI showed nothing.

Well I had better end here as I have a whole bunch of trains to process today. I can't wait, it's like Christmas time opening those boxes!!!

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Revised 09/21/01